Because if we're going to try and stop the misuse of our favorite comics and their protagonists by the companies that write and publish them, we've got to see what both the printed and online comics news is doing wrong. This blog focuses on both the good and the bad, the newspaper media and the online websites. Unabashedly. Unapologetically. Scanning the media for what's being done right and what's being done wrong.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Winick never took part in the 1988 Jason Todd poll

Judd Winick is an overrated writer whose dialect in interviews may be even more alienating than his own scriptwriting in comics. Now, Comics Should Be Good revealed just a few weeks ago that the whole claim made on Newsarama 3 years ago that he'd voted in favor of not killing off Jason Todd in 1989 (apparently his idea of how to justify his wishes for bringing back Jason later) was all just a lot of hot air intended for publicity stunts. As he told Denny O'Neil in this recent Wizard interview:

WINICK: I was giving an interview about bringing Jason Todd back [and] the reporter had said, “Last question, Judd. Back then, for ‘A Death in the Family,’ did you vote?” So, Denny, actually, I hadn’t. I just thought it’d make a better ending for the story. I mean that I lied. I said, “Oh, yes, I did.” How did you vote?” “I voted for him to live.” Because I knew it would make a good button for the interview…and it did. It got reported that “Winick finally gets his wish in the end here!” And the folks on the Internet, of course, took and ran with that, that I am purely doing revisionist history, that I am reliving my adolescence and taking back how the readers wronged me. But I didn’t get a chance to vote. But had I been given the opportunity I think I absolutely would have voted for him to die.

One of the most grating things about Winick is that if he's trying to be funny, he fails quite tragically, in almost the same way that Wizard fails to be an objective news source. And any writer who's going to be that dishonest with the audience and then think he's going to help matters by only admitting things a few years later should be avoided strenuously.

What does Winick think he's trying to achieve by saying and doing all this? Beats me. Any writer that absurd does not deserve to be working in the career he is now.

The assumption was that Robin was voted off the island because nobody liked Jason Todd, and that the Robin character was not what people voted against. Or something to that effect.

I quit buying Batman once Robin showed up. I stuck with Detective for a little while, mostly because of the wicked Breyfogle art, but bringing back Robin after such an absurdly short length of time was an insult.

I didn't know Jason Todd had been resurrected until recently. I do know that the Bat-books have barely even acknowledged the fact, which speaks volumes about how the other creators feel about the decision to bring that character back.chris w. | 02.27.08 - 10:27 am | #

I don't know what I'm more furious at: 1. Winick for lying like that. 2. Wizard for publishing and hyping that story (have the issue, too). or 3. How Winick seemed so cavalier about killing off Jason at the moment of truth 20 years ago.

I wouldn't call him a moonbat, as he's clever for himself (kowtowing to the mainstream). Although, his logic is specious, to say the least.John K. | Homepage | 02.27.08 - 3:50 pm | #

Just recently, to show just how weirdly contemptuous he is, Winick killed off a couple of minor characters in "Titans East Special", including Hawk and Dove. That's right, Hawk and Dove were done in yet again, and the really stupefying thing is that he intially wrote the cast of the special as fun, and then he insulted everybody's intellect by killing them off?!? Anyone with that kind of insane approach to scriptwriting should not be given a job in comics writing.Avi Green | Homepage | 02.27.08 - 5:22 pm | #

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About me

I'm Avi Green

From Jerusalem, Israel

I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best.